Designed for pastors and church leaders or faith formation ministry teams to use during a leadership / council / staff retreat (preferably overnight but one long day is possible), the Annual Roadmap will help churches develop a plan for joining God in mission and moving the congregation forward.

The result?

A plan with up to 6 goals that are aligned around shared annual values, focused on identified stakeholders, and include doable next steps. The package includes a poster for you to print and display as a reminder of the Annual Roadmap goals you set.

This is not a strategic planning process, but it is perfect if your congregation is gearing up for one, wants to prepare for a more intentional LEAD Process, is wanting to set strategic goals for faith formation, or has taken the Congregational Vitality Survey as part of your annual report and is asking, so now what?

Regardless of where your congregation or faith formation ministry is right now, making an Annual Roadmap is as important as developing your own personal annual goals. Each requires an awareness of the realities of your life / your congregation’s life and your larger commitment to learning because you want to be a better person / congregation.

When asked, “would you recommend using this process again?” here’s what people said:

Yes. It works!

Yes! Process was easy and efficient to go through.

Yes! very thoughtful way to express, discuss and arrive at goals to reach.

Yes – timely & fairly effective way of building a 1-year action plan.

Absolutely recommend. Opens communication and brainstorming you may not have thought of previously.

Yes! It is the beginning of open dialog that we need. Just expand the pool of participants.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why do The Annual Roadmap?

This guide is about setting annual goals. This is different than strategic planning or a goal setting process for a three year plan.

Time is not spent focusing on the overall purpose of the congregation or discerning the congregation’s unique values (or those of the faith formation ministry). While we at LEAD hope you will do that—and it may even become one of your annual goals—this guide skips over that deeper work in order to create some forward movement.

The Annual Roadmap provides a great starting place that can easily lead to more integrated planning in the future.

Does The Annual Roadmap really work?

What users are saying

Great process, flow, interaction. The Guidebook, powerpoint, map were all very well received, lots of energy in the room from start to finish.

Enjoyed working w/ fellow members on goals for our church. Enjoyed fellowship as well.

I had opened the retreat to council, team leaders, and anyone else interested and had 24 people involved. We left the retreat with the start of a plan. As of our council meeting last evening, we are taking steps to restructure our ministries around our stakeholders and our evaluation filter around our values so I am very excited for what this year will look like.

This was tested with a large congregation with 15 leaders down to a small congregation with 3 leaders – and several in between! It worked well for all of them!